Scientists Work to Protect Earth's Power Grids from Extreme Solar Storms

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Tools on the ground are helping scientists learn more about the
threat solar eruptions on the sun pose to life as we know it on
Earth.

Experts with the British Geological Survey (BGS) have started
collecting data from three research sites in the U.K. to
determine the
effects of massive solar storms on the Earth's electric power
grids.

Although coronal mass ejections — giant sun eruptions of
super-hot plasma that hurl charged particles across the solar
system — are notoriously difficult to predict, scientists are
trying to understand the best way to protect the power grid from
an overload caused by extreme solar weather. [ The
Worst Solar Storms in History ]

"Society depends on an intricate set of electrical and electronic
systems, many of which are vulnerable to adverse space weather,"
BGS scientist Gemma Kelly said in a statement. "By measuring
exactly what happens during a major storm event, we can work on
better protection for our infrastructure and reduce the damage to
the technology we rely on."

Kelly presented her work at the Royal Astronomical Society's
National Astronomy Meeting 2013 this week in the U.K.

There is always a small amount of natural electricity running
through the ground. Under most circumstances, this electricity is
harmless; however, a solar storm can exacerbate the currents
underfoot, possible wreaking havoc on electrically linked systems
around the world.

When
solar storms hit the Earth in a certain way, it can disrupt
the Earth's magnetic field, allowing strong electric currents in
the upper atmosphere to induce currents on the ground, BGS
officials said.

"The size of the electrical currents generated depends on a
number of factors, such as the local bedrock type and the amount
of water within the ground," BGS officials said in a statement.
"The ground currents can become large enough to potentially cause
problems to technology, such as high-voltage power grids, railway
switches and long pipelines."

The three research sites set up at Shetland, the Scottish Borders
and Devon in the U.K. will give Kelly and other researchers the
first long-term continuous measurements of the ground current in
the country, according to BGS officials.

"The electric field measurement system consists of sites of two
pairs of electrodes, perpendicular to each other and spaced 100
meters apart," Kelly said in a statement. "Each electrode is
buried one meter below the surface and the voltage is measured
across each pair."

Kelly and her team will use the data collected during their
survey to create better models that could help them better
understand and predict the effects of
solar weather.

Scientists estimate that an extreme solar storm only hits the
Earth once every 100 years or so. The last documented severe
solar storm that impacted the planet happened in 1859 and is
known as the Carrington Event. Particles from a coronal mass
ejection caused paper telegraphs to catch fire as the charged
particles overloaded the wires.

A more minor solar event caused a
large-scale blackout in Quebec, Canada in 1989. Six million
people lost electricity for about 12 hours when a transformer was
damaged because solar storm-bolstered ground currents overloaded
the system, BGS officials said.